See title. For those who don’t know, the Mandela Effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. It’s named after Nelson Mandela because a significant number of people remembered him dying in prison in the 1980s, even though he actually passed away in 2013.

I’m curious to hear about your personal experiences with this phenomenon. Have you ever remembered an event, fact, or detail that turned out to be different from reality? What was it and how did you react when you found out your memory didn’t align with the facts? Does it happen often?

  • Pastaguini [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I could have sworn Signs was a legitimately good movie when I saw it as a kid but I rewatched it recently and it’s absurdly bad. The acting is terrible and the cinematography is nonsensical. Roger Ebert gave it a full four stars. I’m convinced there’s a universe I grew up in where it was good and it’s the same one Ebert is from.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I remember there was an AskLemmy question on the Mandela effect, but a week later we all realized it was just a dream.

    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      I know!

      He was constantly in the papers in the 1990s, major figure, every mac madra knew he was alive, where do they get this shite.

      • JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, I never understood that either. He was the president of South Africa from 1994-1999. Yes, he kept a lower profile in the 2000s, but I remember even as a kid/teen seeing articles and photos of him in the news. Bizarre.

        Now the Berenstain Bears one, I understand. At the same time, I just chalk that up to spelling. For what reason would I need to know how to spell “Berenstain?”

        • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          Now the Berenstain Bears one, I understand. At the same time, I just chalk that up to spelling. For what reason would I need to know how to spell “Berenstain?”

          I had one like this where I was shocked to learn there was never a band called Chumbawumba; they are called Chumbawamba and have been all along.

          • JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            Next you’re gonna tell me their hit album was called “Tabthamping” instead of “Tubthumping!” Where does it end?!

            Honestly though, I thought the same!

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    I just found out that you can’t take someone’s lead in order to behave like they are behaving, you can only follow their lead.

    I thought that taking someone’s lead, “I’m taking their lead”, is an actual expression, while apparently it is not.

    • twice_twotimes@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      It may not be the original idiom, but it’s definitely something people say. If the core expressions are “(I) take the lead” and “(you) follow my lead,” that lends itself easily to a merge: you take my lead. It’s not as common as the originals but it’s definitely out there. It will stick around because it’s really easy to unambiguously infer what it means in context.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        I agree that it’s used, I’m sure that if we looked in movie scripts or novels, we would find examples of that phrase, but I can’t find a single dictionary that agrees that the phrase is a legitimate phrase, and that’s what really boggled my mind.

        Boggled and boondoggled over here.

    • Mechanismatic@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

        • indun@feddit.uk
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          8 months ago

          “Take the lead” is certainly an expression used in the UK to denote guiding people, as in “I’ll take the lead”. I assume both come from ballroom dancing.

          I’m sure it’s used elsewhere but it may also simply be a conflation of the two.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            Yeah, taking the lead I think is a pretty common expression, meaning that you’ll take the initiative, but I’ve used " taking their lead" to mean that another person has taken the lead and someone else is following them.

            Which is apparently not real at all, but I only became aware of this because another Lemmy put up a TIL post that explained how they thought that was an expression and discovered after using it their entire life that it was not in any dictionary.

            Just like me

  • Owljfien@iusearchlinux.fyi
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    8 months ago

    I could’ve sworn sprite didn’t have lime in it in Australia, yet I can find no evidence of it ever being made without lime

  • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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    8 months ago

    When i got into monster hunter 4 ultimate(the one with a good story) i was told that Deviljho, a voracious monster that will eat anything mid combat to recover its stamina, will eat its own tail if you cut it. Everyone believed it, no one tried to capture it on camera because of the hardware limitation(no “clip that”, no shadowplay).

    Turn out, millions of Monster Hunter fans remembered wrong because it’s a hoax.

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Heh yup! That’s part of the effect, a whole generation potentially conflated Shaq’s movie with a movie that was never made. Scroll down the link I posted, they mention it. So bizarre.

      • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Lol I got into a pretty heated argument with a group of friends, half of whom definitely remembered the movie and even started recounting some of the plot. The other half had no idea what the hell we were talking about.

          • BertramDitore@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Oh I definitely remember seeing the movie. I even remember the VHS dust jacket on the shelves of Blockbuster. But who the hell knows lol

            • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              Dude yes!!! I remember that same jacket! Thanks for preserving my sanity for another day Bertram, hero.

  • xia@links.hackliberty.org
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    8 months ago

    I get the “feeling” of a mandela effect far more frequently than i can solidly know for sure. I guess my first experience was decades ago as a child. I recall staring at a Bernstein bears book, and being oddly transfixed by tye fact that the spelling of the title did not match that of the authors name, literally inches apart on the same page. Later i experienced a schrodenbug or two (which i think is the same phenomenon), and one really solid social ME were a church ceased to exist (or got merged into a neighboring church). After the first few, now I fully admit I am WAY too quick to believe odd circumstance is a ME, and usually find myself reluctantly disproving that to myself with notebook/journal entries… only to later wonder how they might change too.

  • livus@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    None but I live in New Zealand and have met a lot of strange people online who think our geographic location has changed.

  • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I could’ve sworn Jim Beam whiskey was Jim Bean. A friend of mine had a poster of a whiskey bottle on his wall that I stared at every time I was there. He was a minor at the time and didn’t drink, so I always wondered why he had it up. Years later I saw a Jim Beam bottle and had a Mandela moment. The Berenstein Bears and Mandela dying in jail were things I believed, too, but I think the whiskey one is one I haven’t heard from anybody else, yet.

    • vladmech@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I had to go look it up to double check you weren’t trying to pull a fast one; I was 100% sure it was Bean.

  • ExLisper@linux.community
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    8 months ago

    I’m never sure if Castro is dead or not. I was sure for very long time that he died already but it would turn out that he’s there. I also don’t remember any events specifically related to his death. His brother (?) took over and he kind of fizzled out before he died. Or maybe he’s still there? I’m never quite sure. I mean, it’s 2024 now, he’s definitely dead. Or is he?